


The End Of The Aughts

by mirawonderfulstar



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Aliases, Crack Treated Seriously, Crack and Angst, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 04:44:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14709311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirawonderfulstar/pseuds/mirawonderfulstar
Summary: Over ten years of Goddard Futuristics Company-Wide Morale Boosting Karaoke Parties, condensed into one album of duets.Written for the 2018 Wolf 359 Reverse Big Bang off an art prompt done by rgloom: https://rgloom.tumblr.com/Featuring OCs I'm borrowing from Mad: https://madstuart.tumblr.com/





	The End Of The Aughts

**Author's Note:**

> Karaoke. /kerēˈōkē/ a form of entertainment, offered typically by bars and clubs, in which people take turns singing popular songs into a microphone over backing tracks. Origin: Japanese, lit. “empty orchestra”.

**Day 67- July 30, 2013**

“-can’t believe Minkowski wants us to do a _talent show_ tomorrow. What kind of ridiculous, sadistic commander does that?!” Eiffel ranted, crossing his arms and leaning against the desk. Hilbert glanced up from his work just long enough to take in his posture and determine that he was finally done talking.

“You asked me to remind you that her name is pronounced _Minkowski_.” Hilbert said as he slid a skin sample under the lens of his microscope. “And please, either stop leaning against table or stop bouncing your leg, is very delicate work I am doing.”

“Right, right, you’re looking at my spit or something.”

Hilbert rolled his eyes before peering into the microscope. “Skin from cheek swab, and yes. Standard checkup, nothing too invasive. Will conduct more extensive examination in several months.” Hmm. DNA had not yet begun to mutate. Perhaps longer than several months.

“Yeah, whatever, doc. About this stupid talent show though. You agree with me that Minkowski’s out of line making us do this, right? Like, we have real work to do! She can’t just decide because she likes singing- “

Eiffel rambled on. Hilbert considered correcting his pronunciation again, decided against it, and made a note of the viral progression from his sample. When the sound of Eiffel grumbling finally trailed off, Hilbert looked up at him with a small sigh.

“The quarterly talent show is not the commander’s idea. Is Goddard Futuristics procedure.” He said, _very_ patiently he thought, given the circumstances.

“What, really?” Eiffel sat up, his expression one of horror. “You mean we’re going to have to do these regularly?”

“Yes, Officer Eiffel.”

“But that’s… that’s cruel and unusual punishment, it has to be.”

“Consider yourself lucky we didn’t have the standard farewell party before mission launch.”

Eiffel shuddered, standing up. “What do they usually do before a mission, make everyone go to Broadway together?” 

Hilbert cracked a small smile. “Karaoke.”

 

 

**Monday, June 22, 1998**

“You want me to do _what_ , sir?” Epps asked, doing her very best to keep her tone light and pleasant.

Carter smiled across his desk at her. “I want you to make sure all your scientists and the black archive people are able to make it to this party. You have access to company schedules for a reason, you know.”

Epps refrained from rubbing her forehead with great difficulty. She was getting too old for what amounted to a human resources position and was honestly regretting choosing to come back to Goddard after her surgery, especially if this was the nonsense Carter was going to stick her with. “And what reason would that be?”

“Why, to do your job, of course!” Carter exclaimed. Epps smiled tightly, and he laughed, folding his hands in front of him and leaning forward. “Rosemary.” He said earnestly. “You seem a tad troubled, and we all know you don’t do your best work when you’re troubled, so let me share some information with you. David in financials and Al in PR went over some information with me at the end of the fiscal year and we came to the conclusion that the public wants to know more about what goes on here.” Epps’s eyebrows shot up. “Obviously we can’t have that, but Al insists we need to give them _something_. NASA’s started doing those funny promotional posters for their teams. People expect the crews who go up into space to be… celebrities of a sort. We need a gimmick and karaoke’s very popular right now.”

Epps made a disbelieving sound. If this had been Albert's idea she'd kill him herself. “The crews are one thing. Convincing our research and development divisions to go to a karaoke party and put together a CD for the public is- “

“Something you should be more than able to handle, after all your time working with them.” Carter interjected sweetly. Epps stared at him for a moment, then nodded. Kelley was going to lose his mind when she did the initial “subtle mention” of this later. The thought cheered her very slightly.

“I’ll get on it today. I assume you emailed me all the details?”

“The information should be waiting for you on your computer.” Carter beamed at her, and Epps smiled curtly back as she got up from her chair and left his office. This was looking like it would be a very long week.

 

 

**Day 525-  October 31, 2014**

“Swashes and buckles, Hilbert. Swashes. And. Buckles.” Minkowski’s voice came over the intercom, and Eiffel, who hadn’t really been paying attention to Hilbert’s predicament before that moment, let out a small snort. He set down the list and looked around the store room again, replying noncommittally to Hilbert’s pleas for immediate help with the commander. He’d created the problem so he could fix it himself, Eiffel thought triumphantly. Usually the others were saying that kind of thing to him. It felt good for somebody else to be in the situation for once.

Eiffel resumed his search of the store room, prying open crates large and small and full of odd ephemera. Nearly all of it was kind of creepy and none of it was something he’d expect to find in any of these crates.

Box 487 seemed to be full of odds and ends from somebody named Rosemary Epps’s time at Goddard. It was mostly boring, useless junk, paperwork and the like, none of which was dated any later than 2012, but there were also a number of hats that Eiffel couldn’t imagine all belonging to the same woman unless she had some kind of fetish, and a CD still in its shrink-wrap, labelled “Goddard Futuristics Company Approved Greatest Morale Boosting Karaoke Duets of the 2000s”. Eiffel let out a small laugh and stuck it in one of the many pockets on his pants to play in the comms room later. If the back of the CD was any indication, it had been part of a promotional campaign for some of the earlier missions. Who the hell came up with these ideas?

 

 

**August 8, 1998**

“I think this is going quite well.” William said happily, surveying the room.

“I just saw Adriane from the Black Archive division try to break David Peterson’s arm.” Miranda pointed out, eyeing the pair moving away from each other over the rim of her wine glass.

William frowned in their direction. “Yes, well, he’s been trying to ask her out unsuccessfully for years. I’ll have to have someone, ah… talk to him… about workplace harassment.”

Miranda snorted. It was likely that whatever was coming to Peterson was significantly more permanent of a solution than a lecture. Carter nudged her shoulder. “At least the members of the next mission seem to be having fun!”

The crew of the Ishtar were clustered around the stage that had been erected in one of Goddard’s common spaces, cheering for their captain and engineer as they laughed their way through a song William vaguely recognized from one of his past lives. Not traditionally a duet, that one. An old song. A bit of a sad song, really, but appropriate given what was going to happen to these people if all went according to plan.

_When purple colored curtains mark the end of day…_

William Carter sighed deeply. It wasn’t that he had any qualms about what he was doing, what he was sending these people to do, but it did seem a bit morbid, collecting audio recordings from people who may very well not come back to Earth. It had taken him years to gather the finances and talents to be able to replicate the Tiamat mission, and he was determined to do so, but the crew of the Tiamat had died and he had no way of knowing whether the Ishtar would suffer the same fate. This first deep space mission in so many years was a test, of sorts.

_Deep in the dark your kiss will thrill me like days of old…_

Regardless of what Miranda thought, William was very pleased with the way the karaoke party idea was going. Might as well send them off with a bang. 

The crash of breaking glass announced that David was still bothering Adriane. William handed his glass of champagne to Miranda and stalked off to intervene. It was going to be hell finding a new head of finances.

 

 

**July 12, 1999**

“I can’t believe Goddard is doing this again.” Kelley grumbled, squinting down into his microscope to avoid looking up at Rosemary.

“Oh, come on now, it wasn’t that bad last year.”

“Last year ended with Peterson’s dismissal from the company, in case you’ve forgotten.”

Rosemary chuckled at his tone and at the assumption David Peterson was still out there somewhere. She’d been personally responsible for collecting his belongings from his office and sending them down to the black archive after Cutter had finished with him. Adriane had seemed almost gleeful to pack the contents of his life into a box and seal it up. But that wasn’t the point.

“You went to the last party and you’re going to this one, Kelley.” Rosemary told him sternly, leaning against his desk.

“There isn’t even a mission launch this year! My understanding was that these parties were meant as PR tactic for the deep space missions! And besides,” he said through a huff of air, pulling back from the microscope and nudging Rosemary out of the way to grab something further down his lab station, “Am very close to a major breakthrough.”

Rosemary chose to ignore all but the last sentence. “You’ve been close to a major breakthrough since before the wall came down.”

“Oh, ha ha.” Kelley said, not at all up to his usual standards of sarcastic responses. “Jokes about my heritage are beneath you, Rosie. You have better sense of humor than that.”

“Your virus will be fine without you for the evening. I’ve already put it into your work schedule, you’re going.”

“I am not.”

“You are, if I have to dress you and drag you there myself.”

Kelley narrowed his eyes. “Is that a threat or an offer?”

“That’s up to you.” Rosemary patted him on the hand and left the lab. One of the scientists down, four to go. Then Adriane and her assistants. Rosemary internally cursed Carter for the dozenth time that day.

 

 

**August 13, 1999**

“Where the hell have you been? This is _your_ party.” Miranda demanded in a hiss as William joined her at their table in the lounge he’d had built after deciding the karaoke party would be a yearly occurrence.

“I’m sorry,” he responded, not sounding sorry at all, “but I just had a very interesting call from the captain of the Ishtar.”

Miranda tensed up, setting her drink down and staring at him. “Did they find something?”

“No.” William spat. “One of the crew killed himself.”

“Keep your voice down.” Miranda reminded him, gesturing to the next table over, where Karl Kelley was looking morosely into his drink.

William waved a hand impatiently. “Of course.”

“Who was it?” Miranda asked.

“Does it matter?” Cutter snapped in response, then sighed. “Excuse me.” He said, sounding genuine this time. “The engineer, Gibson. They want to come back and I told them I’d have to go over some things and call them tomorrow.” He rubbed his jaw and tried to take a sip of Miranda’s drink. She tsked at him and moved it out of his reach.

“You know we don’t have the time or resources to send someone out to get them right now.” Miranda reminded him.

“I know. They’ll have to hang in there until next year when the replacement crew is ready.”

“Have you picked a team for that mission yet?”

William nodded in the direction of Kelley, who was finishing off his drink and standing up, looking like he had every intention of leaving.

“Dr Kelley’s research is apparently at a major milestone. He estimates he’ll be needing human subjects within the next year.”

“And will that be the current Ishtar team or the replacement Ishtar team?” Miranda pressed. William shrugged.

“The replacement team, although I don’t know what we’re going to do about the people up there now.” He sighed again.

“Don’t look at me, you have PR people for a reason.” Miranda said. “I deal with artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence exclusively.”

“I suppose you're right. We may have to instate some kind of morale boosting events for the crews once they get up into space, or at least some kind of system of rules. Something to prevent this happening again. Maybe a handbook.”

Miranda couldn’t help the short laugh that burst from her. “You want to give them, what, a thousand and one tips and tricks to stay alive and happy in space? _You?_ Like ‘smile and the whole world smiles with you, cry and you’re in violation of our morale codes’? You can’t regulate human emotion, William. Maybe the man was just depressed.”

William beamed at her. “You should know better than anyone that you absolutely _can_ regulate human emotion, Miranda. And that’s actually an excellent idea. ‘Pryce and Carter’s Deep Space Survival Procedure And Protocol Manual’.” 

“Maybe you should go get some rest, Will.”

“Ah, but then who would be here to sing a duet with you?” William took her hand. “I’ve been looking forward to the chance to put this new stage and sound system to use. We could do that song from Titanic you like.”

Miranda rolled her eyes. “How romantic.” Her tone was very dry. Finishing off her drink, she stood up and allowed William to pull her around the edge of the room, which still smelled faintly of new paint and wood polish. “I suppose if we must.”

 

 

**August 11, 2000**

“Come on, Kelley, you have to sing something. We need a record of every member of the relief crew for the Ishtar, for publicity purposes.” The captain said. Ricci, Karl thought his name was.

“Absolutely not. Is bad enough I have been dragged to this party for the third year in a row, I am not singing as well.”

“I know it’s gimmicky but it’s Carter’s gimmick, which makes it an order. Everyone else has done theirs, even Gem and you know she can’t sing worth a crap.”

“How would I know that?” Karl replied, very irritated.

“Look. if you don’t get up there and sing I’m going to get that chubby PR woman to prod you up onstage.”

Karl glared at the man. Interacting with Rosemary, even a disgruntled Rosemary trying to get him to do something, would surely be preferable to dealing with this man. The thought of spending two years in space with him filled him with dread. He went off to look for her himself.

“Karl!” She exclaimed when he found her. “One last hurrah for you, I suppose?”

“You know this isn’t my idea of fun.”

“No, I’m sure you’ll be much happier once you’re up in space far away from human contact and you can work on your research in peace.” Rosemary rolled her eyes and laid a hand on his arm. “Won’t even miss me, will you?”

“I certainly won’t miss you forcing me to take your leftovers. I can cook, Rosemary.”

“But you don’t and if I left you to your own devices you’d live off crackers or starve yourself.” She argued.

Karl sighed. “I’ll miss you, yes.”

“I knew you would.” Rosemary winked. “Why don’t you sing a quick duet with me and we’ll get out of here until Monday when you launch?”

 

 

**December 22, 2000**

“That certainly didn’t go as I’d hoped.” William said, closing the door to his office and plastering a smile on his face for Miranda. She didn’t look impressed.

“If we’re late for this charity event because you couldn’t tell Kelley to call you back- “

“Every member of the second Ishtar crew is dead.” William cut her off, his tone flat. “Kelley’s about a breath away from some kind of breakdown, and frankly, I expected him to be made of stronger stuff than this so I don’t know what to do about it.”

Miranda tapped her foot impatiently as William put on a long coat from the closet in the hall and pulled out a fur for her. “I don’t see why you need to do anything. Leave him up there to stew for a while. He did say the virus was ready for human testing.”

“That’s true, but we need him on our side. Just because Decima is highly volatile right now doesn’t mean it couldn’t still do what he wants it to do.”

Miranda dismissed this with a shake of her head as she locked the door of the house behind them. “There are much easier and more efficient ways of living forever, William. I’m working on-”

“Until you can show me some concrete plans, Miranda, I’m going to need him alive and well, which means,” William sighed as he opened the car door for her and walked around to get in the driver’s seat, trailing his fingertips through the faint dusting of snow on the hood as he went, “we’re going to have to send someone to get him.”

He leaned over and pulled one of his many cell phones out of the glove compartment, dialing as he backed out of the driveway.

“Warren!” He exclaimed into the phone when the other party picked up. “How would you like the opportunity to finally go up into space?”

 

 

**August 9, 2008**

“William- “

“Marcus.” He corrected Miranda with serene smile. She smiled back with false sweetness.

“Marcus. Do you mind telling me why we’re going through this ridiculous charade this year, of all years?”

Marcus took a seat at their usual table and handed her one of the glasses of champagne he’d brought from the bar. “Because this party is important to me. This is the tenth anniversary of the first party, I wasn’t going to let something like changing aliases keep it from happening. Al was right, the karaoke CDs we get out of them have been really good for PR. I would have expected more people to buy the backlog of digital albums when we released them a few years ago, but- “

“For god’s sake, Marcus, what if somebody makes the connection?”

Marcus laughed and sipped his drink. “Carter was a very old man in appearance, until recently. You came through, Miranda, we look young and vibrant and besides,” he gestured around the room, “who’s here that pays close enough attention to notice? The only one left is Epps and she’ll owe us until the day she dies, whenever that happens to be. We didn’t save her life and pay for experimental medical procedures on a late stage inoperable cancer for nothing. I’ll be damned if I stop enjoying my life because somebody might notice something.”

Miranda did not look mollified. 

“If it will make you feel better, I’ll start hiring a new staff and we can be rid of the old one.”

“It would.”

“I’ll add it to my to do list.”

 

 

**August 12, 2009**

“How are you enjoying the party, Ms. Young?” Kepler asked, offering her a drink. She didn’t take it.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten your earlier attitude and comments.” Rachel snapped.

Kepler looked scandalized. “Whatever could you mean by that?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean.”

“Well, I came over here to make amends, maybe offer you some scotch,” he took a sip of his drink, “but if you want to be like that…”

Rachel snorted and looked up at the stage, where two people she hadn’t met yet but who she thought might be part of the deep space mission that was launching on Monday were doing a very enthusiastic rendition of “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”. They both seemed more than a little drunk. “I know how you can make amends.” Rachel said, struck with an idea. “Apparently, new employees and crews going on the upcoming mission launches have to sing for the publicity CDs.”

“That’s true.” Kepler chuckled to himself, and Rachel watched him in disgust. “You know, that reminds me of the first time I ever went into space...”

Rachel changed her mind about the drink and took the second glass off Kepler’s hands. “Spare me the details.” She finished off the cocktail in less than a minute, smirking at Kepler’s expression. “Get up on stage with me. Let’s go.”

He hesitated for a moment but complied. Rachel flicked through the karaoke selection, looking for a particular Kenny Chesney song one of her ex boyfriends had liked. The perfect song for Kepler’s smug, scotch-obsessed ass to have to sing.

“’You And Tequila’?” Kepler raised his eyebrows at her as he joined her on stage.

“What’s wrong, Warren? Thought you wanted to make amends.”  She handed him one of the microphones, enjoying watching him trying to decide whether to take it or not.

He did.

 

 

**August 2010**

“Why the long face? I’d have thought you’d be thankful you’re excused from the traditional farewell karaoke this mission. Third time’s the charm.” Rosemary said as she elbowed Selberg in the side to scoot over and make room for her at the booth where he was sitting, watching the crew of the Hephaestus sing together. Fourier and Hui in particular seemed to have bonded already. It made something clench in his stomach. As important as his research was, part of him didn’t want to do this all again. He turned to Rosemary, realizing he had no idea what she’d just been saying to him.

 “I apologize. Wasn’t paying attention. What did you say?” Selberg asked, accepting the drink she handed him.

“I was just saying I‘m sure you’re glad you have the excuse of your voice being too distinct to be able to participate in the mandatory karaoke before your mission leaves tomorrow, _Elias._ ” She emphasized the name. “Why do you always pick such awful pseudonyms, my god. Where’s this one from?”

“A variant on my given name.” Ilyich, Ilya, Elias. “And I didn’t pick Kelley. That one was Cutter’s.”

“You haven’t answered my question.” Rosemary poked his shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

“Do you really need to ask?”

She shrugged. “Want to get out of here and stop thinking about it for a while?” she asked.

Selberg just looked at her. He didn’t know how to explain what he was feeling, watching the people who would become his crewmates in the next days be happy together.

Evidently, he’d waited too long in responding, because Rosemary stood up again with a small sigh. “I’ll see you when you come back next, Kelley. Good luck up there.” And she left, leaving Selberg to his thoughts and to watch Lovelace and Lambert argue over the microphone up on stage. He wondered how many of them would ever return to Earth, and how much of the burden of responsibility for their losses would be on his shoulders this time. How much longer would it be before the deaths he caused began to produce some results?

 

 

**August 10, 2012**

“I can’t believe this is a real thing you do at this company.” Maxwell said, her tone exasperated as she looked around the fourteenth annual Goddard Futuristics Karaoke Party For Morale Boosting And Public Relations.

“I know, isn’t it awesome?” Jacobi responded, grinning at her.

“Awesome isn’t exactly the word I’d use.”

“Hey, it’s more fun than the holiday parties. Better booze, too.” Jacobi took a drink of his and glanced around the room for Kepler. “Wonder where your dear old dad is.”

Maxwell shuddered. “Don’t call Kepler that.”

“What? You’re the baby of the SI-5 team and he’s in charge which makes him your dad.”

“That’s really not how it works, Daniel.” Maxwell said, shaking her head.

“It totally is.” Failing to find Kepler in the crowd, he gestured towards the stage. “Well, since your dad’s nowhere to be seen, I guess we’ll have to do our duet together.”

Maxwell choked on her drink. “I beg your pardon?”

“It’s tradition for new employees to sing something for the PR CDs. If you’d rather sing alone, you definitely can, but I think it’s more fun with two. I did a duet with Kepler my first year, but I’d be happy to stand in his place and do a duet with you.” He bowed low, staggering a little as he straightened back up, and Maxwell started to laugh.

“Well, alright, then. But I get to pick, I don’t know a lot of duets.”

“Fine with me.”

They sang a song from Grease, and Jacobi thought, halfway through, that he could see Kepler glaring at him from the back of the room.

He’d been correct. Kepler approached Jacobi at the bar five minutes after they’d finished singing.

“Do you mind telling me what that was?”

“Yeah, we couldn’t find you, so we figured we’d get Maxwell’s mandatory song out of the way before I got too fucked up on this excellent mid-tier alcohol.” Jacobi said. The bartender gave him a cocktail rather than the straight vodka he’d asked for, but Jacobi took it anyway.

“Language.” Kepler scolded. Jacobi ignored him. “And you’d better not get as drunk as you did last year, I don’t want to have to carry you out of here at 1am again.”

Jacobi rolled his eyes. “You really are the dad, aren’t you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing. Look, if you’re jealous I sang Grease with Maxwell, I promise you it was her choice of song and not mine.”

“What a funny coincidence all three of us happen to like songs from the same musical.”

“Yeah, it _was_ a coincidence. Stop being weird.”   

Kepler uncrossed his arms and sighed. “I am not ‘being weird’, Jacobi. I just don’t think it would impress the latest member of our team very much to learn that you drank so much at the previous karaoke party that you talked me into singing ‘You’re The One That I Want’ with you.” He cleared his throat in response to Jacobi’s blush. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go pay Ms. Young back for a crime she committed against me a few years ago. Don’t do anything to embarrass yourself.” And with that, he clapped Jacobi on the shoulder and walked over to Adriane Dolmetsch, the head of the black archives and terror of Goddard employees everywhere, and started up an animated conversation with her. Adriane listened to him, unsmiling, and eventually nodded.

The next pair on stage were Adriane and Rachel Young, the latter of whom looked absolutely mystified and horror-struck to be on stage with the other woman.

Maxwell joined Jacobi at the bar as they started up their duet. “What’s up with them, and why does Kepler look so pleased with himself? Did he yell at you for something?”

“No, but I think he set these two up for this duet to make Rachel uncomfortable. She’s scared as hell of Dolmetsch.”

Maxwell frowned. “What makes you say that?”

“Everyone’s scared as hell of Dolmetsch.”

Maxwell leaned her back against the bar and glanced from the pair on stage to Kepler. “Huh.”

“Can you believe he said _I’m_ the embarrassing one?” Jacobi asked Maxwell, who just shrugged.

 

 

**December 9, 2012**

Selberg didn’t know what he had expected coming back to Earth would be like, but he certainly hadn’t anticipated… this. He was scheduled to go up again in the spring of the next year. The Hephaestus crew were all dead, and soon he’d be back in the ship where they’d lived out the end of their lives.

The Ishtar had been a similar situation, yes, with his crew replacing a previous crew on a station that was already in deep space, but he hadn’t known them. He’d killed the second crew, and then been assigned to a different station, and then gone up with the Hephaestus. He’d never had to _return_ to a place before. It wasn’t a pleasant thing to look forward to, but then, coming home had been no picnic, either.  

His lab at Goddard had been given to somebody else, all his research that he hadn’t taken with him packed away into the black archive until he returned. Goddard had kept up the rent on the small apartment a few blocks away from their offices where he’d been living, and everything inside was as he’d left it- sterile and uninviting, since he spent most of his time in his lab, and lacking the association of home after two years away. Somehow the tiny living space seemed enormous after the confined quarters onboard the Hephaestus.

And then there was Rosemary.

Selberg hadn’t been hoping for a warm welcome home, not after the way he’d brushed her off before leaving, but he had been hoping to see her. The news of her death was somehow the most surreal part of the whole thing, and the whole thing was plenty surreal without it. Her belongings had been sent to the black archives, so whatever happened to such things, they were beyond his reach. Selberg found himself staring around his empty apartment, unable to work to take his mind off things and unable to stop dwelling on the fact that he didn’t even have any items that reminded him of her. He'd have killed for even an empty casserole dish.

Cutter refused his request to pull his equipment and notes out of storage. The man insisted Selberg spend the next several months resting and preparing to go back into space, and despite all his attempts to explain that resting wasn’t something he knew how to do under these circumstances, he was still looking at a long, bleak stretch alone with his thoughts.

It was that which drove him into the CD section of the bookstore. He didn’t actually own a CD player, but he was tired of the quiet and would have resorted to playing them through the speakers on his ancient laptop if need be.

He found _the_ CD by accident. It was just somebody’s lazy sorting that had caused a copy of one of the Goddard Karaoke Hits of the 2000s to end up in the section he was searching through, but it felt like something earth-shattering and profound to find it.

Selberg gripped the plastic case too tightly as he read the track list on the back. He’d never actually seen one of these in a finished form, although he’d known since the first party that this was why Cutter was recording his employees singing. It was mostly upbeat tunes, a few love songs, a few musical numbers. But more than half of the names on the back were people he knew were now dead. What would this list look like after the next Hephaestus mission? Who else was going to disappear, only to be remembered by the world as a name next to a karaoke track on a gimmick dreamed up to compete with NASA and their promotional posters?

 

 

**Day 525-  October 31, 2014**

“I guess I should be... grateful. Commander Minkowski only suffered minimal burn and frostbite injuries, and, once whatever crap Hilbert gave her wears off, should make a full recovery. I guess I even have new stuff to tease her with, now that she’s unleashed her inner Bob Fosse. And I suppose there’s something to be said about the fact that we didn’t lose the entire station from that hull breach. That we didn’t all die in a blazing inferno or suffocating in the blackness of the void or freezing to death.”

Eiffel sighed and settled more comfortably into his chair. Something poked him in the thigh. The CD he’d discovered rooting through the storage room. He pulled it out, unwrapping the shrink wrap with a grin as he finished up his log.

“But I really wanted to know what was inside Box 953, dear listeners. I really wanted to know. Ugh, thank God this day is over... From the Communications Room of the U.S.S. Hephaestus, this Doug Eiffel, signing off. Good night.”

With that, he switched off his recorder and switched on the station wide announcement channel.

“Good evening, crew of the Hephaestus! It’s been a long and ridiculous day, but it’s about to get even weirder. I have in my possession a CD which I found today.” He popped the CD into the player on the comms panel and leaned back in his chair. “It’s titled Goddard Futuristics Company Approved Greatest Morale Boosting Karaoke Duets of the 2000s, and according to the track list on the back, Pryce and Carter of DSSPPM fame recorded one of the songs. Should be good for a laugh or two, huh?”

Two floors below him, Hilbert froze just as he was about to collapse into bed before sprinting upstairs to confiscate the CD.

**Author's Note:**

> Goddard Futuristics Company Approved Greatest Morale Boosting Karaoke Duets of the 2000s
> 
> Track list  
> 1\. “Summer Nights” Maxwell and Jacobi  
> 2\. “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” Giesbrecht and Burke  
> 3\. “Telephone” Young and Maxwell  
> 4\. “Time Warp” Hui and Fourier  
> 5\. “Paradise By The Dashboard Light” Dyson and Irving  
> 6\. “You’re The Reason God Made Oklahoma” Shipley and Thiemann  
> 7\. Twilight Time”, Gibson and Nairn  
> 8\. “You’re The One That I Want” Kepler and Jacobi  
> 9\. “You’re So Vain” Young and Dolmetsch  
> 10\. “I Got You Babe” Heath and Kafatos  
> 11\. “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” Kelley and Epps  
> 12\. “500 Miles” Lovelace, Lambert, Fisher, Fourier, and Hui  
> 13\. “You And Tequila” Kepler and Young  
> 14\. “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” Bernoulli and Jordan  
> 15\. “My Heart Will Go On” Pryce And Carter


End file.
